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Tencil vs stagewise

stagewise is an open-source agentic IDE: it runs its own agents on the models you choose and shows your app in its own browser, where you can select elements to attach to a message. Tencil is smaller: it adds pins to your dev site in the browser you already use, and hands them to the agent you already use, Claude Code or T3 Code.

npx tencil

At a glance

Checked against stagewise’s own site on 16 October 2026.

Tencilstagewise
What it isA browser overlay and a daemon for the agent you have.An agentic IDE that creates and orchestrates its own agents.
Where you pointYour dev site, in your own browser.The stagewise browser, inside the app.
What the agent getsComponent and owners with file and line (React 19), markup, selector, text, size, viewport, an optional screenshot.Outer HTML and DOM position, key computed styles, bounding box and a CSS selector path.
Agent and modelsClaude Code or T3 Code, with their logins and the models they run.Its own agents, on frontier, open-weight or local models, through its cloud or your keys.
ConversationA pin on the element, and a thread you can continue in your agent.In the IDE, with agents working in parallel.
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0

Which should you choose?

They solve overlapping problems in different ways. Pick by how you like to work.

Choose Tencil if

  • You want to keep your browser, editor and agent, and add pointing at the UI to them.
  • You already work in Claude Code or T3 Code and want pins to land there.
  • You want a permissive license.

Choose stagewise if

  • You want one app that runs agents, previews and git workflows together.
  • You want to run open-weight or local models.
  • You want several agents working in parallel from one place.

Tencil vs stagewise: questions

What people ask when they compare the two.

No. The overlay loads on your dev site in whatever browser you use, from the daemon on your machine.

Through your agent: T3 Code runs the providers you set up in it. Tencil itself does not call a model.

All questions

More comparisons

How Tencil compares with other ways to point an agent at your UI.